Christmas Romance Volume 2

by Sharon Kleve

  “Grout cleaner? I swear by it,” the woman said.

  “No,” Leila replied.

  The clerk held up some tin foil pants. “These shorts will blast away fat and leave a six-pack,” he said.

  Leila wrinkled her nose. “Don’t you need to back up statements like that with facts? And, uh, no. If I gave it to him, it’d be like saying he’s fat. He’s not. He’s just right.”

  “Sunglasses with built-in binoculars? I’m getting some for my uncle. He’ll love it,” the woman suggested, holding out a pair of glasses that looked like something out of an early James Bond film.

  “No, just doesn’t seem right,” Leila said.

  “Ma’am, those are our best sellers. How about the car side mirror covers?”

  All Leila heard was “ma’am.”. She’d never been called ma’am before. Her mother was ma’am. Her teachers were ma’am. She wasn’t ma’am. She looked at her clothes; wasn’t she dressed like a typical twenty-something? Wouldn’t a middle-aged woman look fake in her clothes?

  “Um, thanks, but maybe I’ll try another store,” Leila started backing away and noticed a line of impatient shoppers staring at her. “Uh, sorry, thanks, bye,” she said quickly as she moved past the miracle mops and nail fungus removers.

  At the threshold of the store, Leila thought, a clap-on, clap-off light might be fun, but she got one last glare from a large burly shopper and decided against it.

  Uncertain where to go next, Leila noticed some young men outside a skater store. Since the store seemed to have more than skateboards, she ventured in, and promptly became the oldest person in the store, including the manager.

  Leila stared at the skateboard and snowboard attire. Does Nathan even ’board? Did they discuss that in their long conversations together?

  “Can I help you?” a young woman with multiple piercings and tri-color hair asked Leila.

  Ditching her earlier TV show ideas, Leila decided to once again solicit advice. “I’m looking for a present for a guy I’m dating. What are some of your best sellers?”

  The young woman tilted her half-shaved head to one side and viewed Leila critically. Leila wondered if a ‘ma’am’ would soon be uttered. “How old is he?” she asked Leila.

  Leila sighed in relief; no comments about her age. “He’s about thirty.”

  The sales clerk turned and started walking to the back of the store. Leila assumed she should follow, so she did.

  “Backpack with holster for a skateboard?” the clerk suggested. Leila shook her head.

  “Hacky sack?”

  “Nope.”

  She held out a flannel shirt for Leila to view. Leila looked around and it was a veritable forest of flannel shirts. Did Nathan wear flannel? Probably. But would she dare choose clothes for him?

  “Looks good, but I’m not sure what he already owns,” Leila replied.

  “Belts?”

  Leila looked at the belts. Did men still wear them? The ones on display had logos and initials Leila didn’t recognize. What if she bought him the wrong brand? It could be embarrassing for both of them; for her, because she was too clueless to know the right brand , and for him for wearing the wrong brand.

  “Nope. Anything else?” Leila asked, feeling a headache coming on.

  “Shoes?”

  “No idea what his size is.”

  “Party socks?”

  “Say what?” Leila asked, feeling the need for a translator. Maybe a generation language decoder.

  “Party socks,” the sales clerk pointed at some brightly-colored knee-high socks. They were plaid, striped, and neon. One had a Native American pattern, , and one had evil eyes. “Party socks,” she said again, as if Leila didn’t understand the first two times.

  Leila held the evil eye ones in her hand, disappointed she didn’t know about their existence before the White Elephant gift exchange at work. “Uh, no. What’s that?”

  Leila noticed a wildly-patterned shirt near the socks. Not an evil eye, but an unattractive, random pattern of brightly-colored animals, rainbows and trees. “Say what?” Leila said again as she moved closer to it and saw the pattern actually subtly spelled out four-letters words. Not words like ‘duck’ or ‘tree’ but other, NC17- rated words.

  A smile appeared under the sales clerk’s pierced nose. “Yeah. It’s a best seller.”

  “My brother would love it. My parents would kill me,” Leila said, admiring the pattern. Could she buy it for Nathan? Would he think it’s funny? Probably. Would he ever wear it? Doubtful. Maybe once to a party and then it’d stay in the back of a closet for years. She looked at the price tag. That decided it.

  Leila sighed. “No. Sorry. Thanks anyway ,” she said walked out of the store.

  She spied a sign that read, ‘Gift Store.’. What could be more perfect than that?

  Leila walked in and was immediately the youngest person in the store.

  “Welcome,” said a grey-haired sales clerk at the cash register, busy ringing up the purchases of a long queue of similarly grey-haired women.

  Leila looked around and saw lots of knickknacks that would fill a grandmother’s curio cupboard— plaques with cute sayings, gift wrap, paperweights, bookmarks, stuffed animals, holiday ornaments, tea cups and cozies.

  Leila turned around and walked out again.

  The directory was no longer her friend. She decided to walk the mall, hoping some shop would have a Simpson’s mug, maybe hidden in the back.

  Hours later, her aching feet led her to sharing a tiny space on a bench with some teenagers, as she tried to order a Buffy the Vampire Slayer DVD gift set online.

  “Expedited shipping takes two business days during November and December!” she exclaimed.

  “Weirdo.”

  Leila realized she had used her out loud voice as she looked up from her phone into the eyes of three teenage boys sitting on a bench near her. She shifted from foot to foot. Shopping for the perfect gift for a fabulous guy was tiring, and if those boys sat closer together—pushed their legs together instead of sitting like they were using the inner thigh machine at the gym—there would be room for one 29-year-old-woman with a slight build, namely her.

  She wondered if they really believed she was a weirdo, would they move and give her more room on the bench?

  Better not risk it.

  She shifted from foot to foot again. Her feet felt sore. She could use a break.

  As a child, Leila was often intimidated by teenage boys with dark clothing and/or heavy metal T-shirts and major attitudes. Now, she liked to assist karma in the payback mode. Was it worth it two days before Christmas?

  How did she feel about that one elective in Drama her sophomore year?

  Leila squeezed into the eleven inch gap between the edge of the bench and the nearest teenage boy.

  “Hey!” The boy let out a cry and slid closer to his friend on the other side, who pushed him back toward Leila. Leila stared at her smart phone like it contained the answer to all life’s mysteries, namely, what to get a guy you’ve been dating just a few weeks. In short, she ignored them.

  “Hey lady, we were here first,” the teenager spoke.

  “My feet are killing me. Bunions. Have you ever had them? Jimminy Cricket they hurt .” Leila had no idea why she’d channeled her grandmother at that moment. Maybe because she assumed thirty-year-old and eighty-year-old-women were considered the same generation to a fifteen-year-old? To emphasize her point, she held her sheepskin boots straight out and rotated her ankles one way and then the other. She had no idea if bunions impacted toes, the sole of the foot or the ankle, but she seriously doubted the boys knew more about bunions than she did.

  “Ugh, gross!” Before Leila completed one full rotation in each direction, the boys left the bench . A mother with a baby and a f
rail, older man, immediately sat down next to her.

  Fine. Immediate problem solved: where to sit . Next and larger issue: what to buy Nathan?

  Leila took a deep breath, leaned back on the bench and closed her eyes. Gift-giving was usually not so difficult, especially with gift cards and online wish lists. She managed to complete most of her Christmas shopping by Black Friday, thanks to planning ahead, making lists and checking sales, but this? Argh! This was different. She was buying for someone she barely knew, but felt like she knew.

  She’d dated before. What did she get guys in the past? Did she ever have a boyfriend at Christmas before? Christmas. That meant New Year’s Eve was just around the corner. Should she ask him what he’d planned?

  Yikes. Work, she could handle. Work was a known quantity. Dating? Ugh. She had the skills, talent and experience of an urban rapper at a tractor pull.

  Maybe she should ask a man, but whom? The youngest of three daughters, Leila had no male siblings, except for Aaron, her brother-in-law. That might count for something. But did she like his taste? Leila recalled his holly-themed trousers last Christmas and shuddered. There was a fine line between tacky and funny, and tacky and unpleasant. Should she ask him for ideas?

  With nothing to lose she dialed his number.

  Aaron was married to Samantha, Leila’s five-years elder sister, and lived in the Washington D.C. area. He worked as an attorney . He loved her sister and she loved him, and that’s all that really mattered. But Leila never really felt comfortable around Aaron. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but one thing she’d learned in her twenty-nine years, a hunch is a message. Listen.

  And now she had to listen to Aaron.

  “A Christmas present?” Aaron asked, once Samantha stopped laughing at the idea of Leila having to call her brother-in-law for advice about a man she’d only dated three weeks. “How about if you pay for dinner for a change? You women always expect men to pay for everything.”

  Leila was grateful she wasn’t on video chat or he’d see her eyes roll.

  She’d hoped her lack of a verbal response conveyed her feelings sufficiently.

  Aaron cleared his throat. “Okay, sports teams. That’s an easy one. Baseball cap, shot glass, calendar, shirt. You know, the usual swag.”

  Maybe the attorney is onto something, Leila thought. Those were pretty good suggestions.

  “One problem,” Leila said aloud, “I’m not sure what teams he follows.”

  Leila could just hear Aaron’s eyes roll

  “You haven’t discussed sports?” he asked, incredulously. “How many times have you gone out?”

  “About five.” Exactly five, she thought, but didn’t want to sound like a stalker chick. She heard Aaron chuckle. Her tone of voice must have tipped him off. . She cleared her throat. “Five,” she said, her voice deepening as if to convey seriousness and gravity and truth, but it cracked halfway through the monosyllable word, ending on a high-pitched squeak. She heard Aaron half cough, half laugh, into the phone. “Five,” she said again, this time with a depth to rival James Earl Jones.

  “What does he like to drink? A nice bottle of wine or a six-pack of his favorite imported beer, guys go for that,” Aaron said after his coughing fit ended.

  That’s a great idea, thought Leila. It’s casual and inexpensive, and if I buy the right one, it shows I’m thinking about him and actually listened and retained knowledge in our long conversations. One of their conversations included family history. “His dad’s an alcoholic. Great idea, but I think it’s too soon for me to give him a present that says, ‘Follow the family heritage.’”

  “Gimme that phone.” Leila heard Samantha’s voice in the background and the sound of a brief scuffle. “Leila? Samantha here. I overhead you and Aaron talking. Gloves. That’s all I’m gonna say. Cashmere gloves. Or a scarf. Cashmere scarf. It has to be cashmere. Cashmere says class. It says you care. People don’t buy cashmere for themselves; they wait for other people to buy it for them. Cashmere. You’ll thank me. Okay, here Aaron, take the phone. Oh, one more thing, call Mom. She forgot what time your flight arrives. Bye. Here, Aaron.”

  Gloves. Cashmere gloves. What a great idea.

  “Thanks, bye,” Leila pushed the ‘End Call’ button on her phone just as she heard Aaron utter a syllable. He’ll call me back if he needs to talk to me, she thought distractedly as she put the phone back into her jeans pocket and surveyed the mall. Something seemed different, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Shaking her head, she got off the bench and started shopping again.

  She almost walked right past the baseball cap store, but stopped in time to turn around, just missing causing a collision with the group walking behind her.

  Closed.

  Really? Two days before Christmas?

  Puzzled, Leila read the handwritten note in the window.

  Closed Due To Storm

  “Storm?”

  Storm? What storm? When she first got here, there was some snow, but nothing any native-born New Englander couldn’t handle.

  “No. Fucking. Way. I knew this would happen.” A gravely, masculine voice four feet from Leila spoke.

  “What happened?” Leila typically did not talk to strangers, but curiosity got the best of her. And she had a feeling the answer would impact her as well.

  “The storm. Every place is closing ’cause of the storm.” A middle-aged, round face spoke to her from a body plump from a heavily-padded down jacket —and more. His thick grey eyebrows emphasized the words. He turned away from Leila and looked at the mall. “There’s gotta be another baseball cap store here.” His Boston accent turned ‘store’ into ‘sto-wah’ and ‘here’ into ‘he-yah.’

  Leila thought for a moment. She used to mall walk with the seniors winter mornings when she first moved there years ago and, jobless, could not afford a gym membership.

  “Second floor, next to Sears,” she said quickly, her accent suddenly turning ‘floor’ into ‘flo-wah’ and ‘Sears’ into ‘See-yahs.’. Leila unconsciously mimicked other’s accents, which sometimes helped ease into conversations and camaraderie, and other times people thought she was mocking them. An unfortunate habit she hoped to eliminate.

  “Well, c’mon,” the burly man said, and they walked quickly to the escalator to the second level.

  On the escalator, the burly man offered his hand. “Charlie,” he said.

  “Leila,” she replied, shaking his large gloved hand with her own.

  “The wife reminded me I promised her brother a Patriots hat,” he explained.

  “I’m looking for a present for a guy I’m dating. He’s driving me to the airport in two days. I thought I’d get a Red Sox hat.”

  “This guy, is he a Red Sox fan? Don’t want a Yankees fan trashing our hat.”

  “He’s from Connecticut.”

  “Do you know fer sure he’s a Red Sox fan? Those people in Connecticut, sure, they’re in New England, but they’re all New York. Y’know what I mean? They’re just a big suburb of New York.”

  Leila thought for a moment. Charlie had a good point. Raised in Vermont herself, she was born to root for Boston teams. New York was almost a different planet. But for southern New England, they could be rooting for the enemy…

  “Gloves,” Charlie said. “A nice pair of gloves. You can’t go wrong there. And everybody always seems to lose their gloves. Lost and Founds are full of ‘em. My buddy works for the T. Umbrellas, gloves, hats, laptops, they’re all there. Shopping bags with Christmas presents, all there. Or maybe a box of chocolates. Everybody loves chocolate.”

  Chocolate. Her stomach growled. Leila pressed her fist against her abdomen and hoped that Charlie hadn’t heard. But he must have heard her mumble, “Chocolate”, the way the Cookie Monster says “Cookie.”

  “There’s a Godiva near Sears too.
”

  Leila’s heart raced as she reminded herself she was shopping for Nathan, not for herself.

  As Charlie and Leila approached the second baseball cap store, Leila realized what was different . The shoppers who weren’t fixated on stores, dodged the multiple fresh puddles of snow not only near the entryways but at the foot of escalator as well. The snow seemed to not only follow the boots through the store but fell off scarves, hats, gloves, and hair along the well-trodden footpaths of the increasingly wet mall.

  If it’s like this inside, what’s the outside like? Leila wondered.

  As if on cue, a large woman bumped into Leila. She looked up from her dazed walk staring at the floor to say “Oh, ’scuse me,” and trundled away. Leila felt a cold dampness on her right wrist and shook off the snow that must have fallen from the woman onto her arm. Gloves. Long gloves would be a good present, she thought. Wait, stop, Leila. You’re not shopping for yourself. Focus, woman.

  Lost in her thoughts, Leila almost followed Charlie into the shop. He turned and held up his meaty gloved hand to stop her progress into the shop.

  “Wait, Leila, do you know fer sure he’s a Red Sox fan?”

  Leila mentally skimmed through hours and hours of conversations with Nathan over the past three weeks. How did sports teams not come up? Maybe because it wasn’t baseball season and she didn’t follow basketball or hockey? Families, jobs, childhood, college, favorite ice cream flavors, movies, TV shows, smart phone apps, hopes for life at thirty, forty and fifty, favorite vacation spots, childhood dream jobs… All those topics came up in conversation. How did they avoid discussing sports teams? Maybe he knew she was a Red Sox fan and therefore a natural sworn enemy of the New York Yankees?

  “I’m not sure…” Leila replied tentatively.

  A furrow appeared between Charlie’s brows and he carefully moved Leila away from the store entrance so a mother and her young son could enter.

  “You wouldn’t buy a Yankees cap, would you?”

  “Never,” Leila replied on instinct.

  “Now, if this fella was a Yankees fan, what do you think he’d do with a Red Sox cap?”